Cost of 4GB of ram for a desktop

[tlcwaterfall]

Just need some help please.

My desktop has 2GB. of ram and Windows 7 is using 90% of the ram.

Will I see a significant increase in performance if I upgrade my ram to 4GB?

And how much will the 4GB. cost?

Any helpful replies are very much appreciated.

Thank you.

[JSixpack]

Just need some help please.

My desktop has 2GB. of ram and Windows 7 is using 90% of the ram.

Will I see a significant increase in performance if I upgrade my ram to 4GB?

Yes.

And how much will the 4GB. cost?

Depends on the type & brand.

http://www.jib.co.th/web/index.php/product/listCategory/1/42/0/index.php

[tlcwaterfall]

Just need some help please.

My desktop has 2GB. of ram and Windows 7 is using 90% of the ram.

Will I see a significant increase in performance if I upgrade my ram to 4GB?

Yes.

And how much will the 4GB. cost?

Depends on the type & brand.

http://www.jib.co.th/web/index.php/product/listCategory/1/42/0/index.php

Thank you for your help.

My computer shop has quoted 2900 baht for 2 lots of 2GB which seems high to me.

I will take the pc to them today and talk face to face and see what happens.

[Pib]

Well, it will help...but to what degree will depend on what applications/games you are running. I've got one old Toshiba laptop running Win 7 with only 2GB RAM and the computer only recognizes 1.5GB of that 2.0GB...just a limitation of that particular old machine. Anyway I just turned it on and only around 50% of that 1.5GB of memory is used up by Win 7 with a few small background apps like my antivius running in the background. I then fired up Chrome and MS Word and the memory usage only went to around 60%...still 40% of my memory available.

If 90% of your memory is being used just by Win 7 you must have a big bunch of apps running in the background and/or have your virtual memory/paging file turned off or set too low.

[KhunBENQ]

If you run Windows 7 32bit version, the PC will only be able to use a maximum of 3GB.

The 64bit version does not have a (practical) limitation.

2 GB, 90% used (1.8 GB)?

Thats quite a lot.

What/how many programs do you run concurrently?

Maybe you have too much useless stuff (pre)loaded.

A bare Windows 7 (only OS and necessary drivers) on a desktop PC starts with about 700 MB.

Edited September 1, 2014 by KhunBENQ

[keemapoot]

I just bought a Kingston single slot 4GB upgrade for an all-in-one desktop. Price was 1400 Baht.

[Deacon Bell]

Would getting a new processor be money better spent?

[Pib]

When it comes to giving a desktop or laptop a very noticeable performance boost a Solid State Drive (SSD) will do the job. SSDs are generally pricey in Thailand compared to locations like the U.S....I've bought two 500GB SSD over the last few months from online U.S. stores and got each of them around 40 to 50% cheaper than their cost in Thailand...but I was fortunate in have some friends passing through Thailand who brought them to me. If going the SSD route I would recommend at least a SSD 250GB due to speed and longevity issues compared to a 128GB or lower size SSD. And for a machine which still needs large paging file/virtual memory due to low RAM, a paging file on a SSD will be much, much faster than a paging file on a Hard Disk Drive (HDD)...and wearing out a SSD nowdays with too many "writes" is practically a thing of past especially if getting a 250GB or larger SSD.

I've now have a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD in my Lenovo i7 CPU based laptop with 8GB RAM running Win 8.1 and a Seagate 600 Series 480GB SSD in my 7 year old Toshiba Pentium Core Duo based laptop running Win 7---a SSD provided a BIG boost in performance on my old Toshiba laptop and a pretty nice performance increase on my Lenovo.

And for a while I had that Seagate 480GB SSD in my 8 year old Toshiba Celeron CPU based laptop with only 2GB RAM running Win 7--that SSD provided a big performance increase...turned it back into a usable machine...now I have 7200RPM HDD in that 8 year old computer but scoping out a cheap 250GB SSD to put in it for that performance boost. And these two old Toshiba's only have a SATA 1 drive interface; if they had a current data SATA 3 interface the performance increase would have been even more.

Yeap, a SSD will provide a very noticeable performance increase....and you no longer have to worry about bumps/physical shocks messing up your drive and losing your programs & data.

[Turkleton]

I've got one old Toshiba laptop running Win 7 with only 2GB RAM and the computer only recognizes 1.5GB of that 2.0GB...just a limitation of that particular old machine.

I would guess, the reason why your Laptop only recognises 1.5 GB is, that your graphics adapter cuts off 512 MB of your RAM (shared memory).

[tlcwaterfall]

Thank you very much everyone for your very helpful and informed replies.

My personal computer is 7 years old and I am reluctant to put too much money in to an old machine.

It is a concern that the ram usage is so high so I may take the pc to the shop and see if they can identify the cause before spending money on ram or new processors etc.

[Deacon Bell]

My personal computer is 7 years old and I am reluctant to put too much money in to an old machine.

The thing is... don't you really just have to buy a new processor and hard-drive and it is like new again? Upgrade the parts as required?

I bought a built-up PC from JIB for about 15k 3 yrs ago, when it's time for a new processor I will just buy a new processor, when it is time for a new hard-drive, I'll get a new one slotted in.

[Pib]

Thank you very much everyone for your very helpful and informed replies.

My personal computer is 7 years old and I am reluctant to put too much money in to an old machine.

It is a concern that the ram usage is so high so I may take the pc to the shop and see if they can identify the cause before spending money on ram or new processors etc.

Why take it to a shop to determine which programs/apps are possibly eating a lot of RAM? Just use the Task Manager utility in Windows to see that....that's what the shop might do...but they'll probably just sell you some RAM since that's one way they they make money. To fire-up the Windows Task Manager utility in Win 7 just do the following:

- Press Cntl-Alt-Det keys ssimultaneously which will bring up a menu

- Select Start Task Manager from that menu

- Select Processes tab

- Click Memory column header to sort by highest memory usage

Then from looking at the Name and Description columns determine which progams/apps are using the most memory. You will see many programs/apps running but the great majority of these are Windows operating system utilities so don't worry about them...just look for those programs/apps a person installs himself (i.e., like whatever browser you use, word processing apps, cloud drives, anit-virus/firewall programs, could be many different programs as different people load different things) after he has loaded Windows when first getting the computer.

Also open your Task Bar in the lower right hand corner of your Windows Desktop to display to see what programs/apps you have running in the background.

After doing this above you may find one or two of your programs/apps are eating a bunch of your memory...maybe even programs/apps you didn't know were running in the background. Then you may want to consider setting them to whether they don't automatically start when you start your computer or just uninstalling the programs.

And it could also be a video card setting where you are allowing it to use a bunch of your RAM to increase the video card memory available. If so, lower that memory card shared memory setting.

Good luck.

[tlcwaterfall]

Thank you very much everyone for your very helpful and informed replies.

My personal computer is 7 years old and I am reluctant to put too much money in to an old machine.

It is a concern that the ram usage is so high so I may take the pc to the shop and see if they can identify the cause before spending money on ram or new processors etc.

Why take it to a shop to determine which programs/apps are possibly eating a lot of RAM? Just use the Task Manager utility in Windows to see that....that's what the shop might do...but they'll probably just sell you some RAM since that's one way they they make money. To fire-up the Windows Task Manager utility in Win 7 just do the following:

- Press Cntl-Alt-Det keys ssimultaneously which will bring up a menu

- Select Start Task Manager from that menu

- Select Processes tab

- Click Memory column header to sort by highest memory usage

Then from looking at the Name and Description columns determine which progams/apps are using the most memory. You will see many programs/apps running but the great majority of these are Windows operating system utilities so don't worry about them...just look for those programs/apps a person installs himself (i.e., like whatever browser you use, word processing apps, cloud drives, anit-virus/firewall programs, could be many different programs as different people load different things) after he has loaded Windows when first getting the computer.

Also open your Task Bar in the lower right hand corner of your Windows Desktop to display to see what programs/apps you have running in the background.

After doing this above you may find one or two of your programs/apps are eating a bunch of your memory...maybe even programs/apps you didn't know were running in the background. Then you may want to consider setting them to whether they don't automatically start when you start your computer or just uninstalling the programs.

And it could also be a video card setting where you are allowing it to use a bunch of your RAM to increase the video card memory available. If so, lower that memory card shared memory setting.

Good luck.

I have looked at task manager many times and Chrome is using up the majority of the memory.

[Deacon Bell]

I'm running Win 7 64bit, just have Chrome running, 5 tabs opened.

Task manager:

CPU Usage: 1%

Memory: 2.02GB

I have 4GB of Ram.

[yankee99]

I just bought a Kingston single slot 4GB upgrade for an all-in-one desktop. Price was 1400 Baht.

i also got 2gb kingston ddr3 750baht @jib

[rakman]

My personal computer is 7 years old and I am reluctant to put too much money in to an old machine.

The thing is... don't you really just have to buy a new processor and hard-drive and it is like new again? Upgrade the parts as required?

I bought a built-up PC from JIB for about 15k 3 yrs ago, when it's time for a new processor I will just buy a new processor, when it is time for a new hard-drive, I'll get a new one slotted in.

Hard drives, yes, Processor, maybe. Not an argument, just a little education for the reader.

The limitation is the processor family and motherboard compatibility. They go hand in hand. So while you can get a faster processor, assuming you didn't get the top of the family initially that fits the motherboard, it will be most likely a minor increase in performance.

To really get a big boost, the choice would be to replace the cpu and motherboard together, but then you might need compatible memory.

Three years is about the time that major improvements in motherboards and processors come together.

[rakman]

Just need some help please.

My desktop has 2GB. of ram and Windows 7 is using 90% of the ram.

Will I see a significant increase in performance if I upgrade my ram to 4GB?

Yes.

And how much will the 4GB. cost?

Depends on the type & brand.

http://www.jib.co.th/web/index.php/product/listCategory/1/42/0/index.php

Thank you for your help.

My computer shop has quoted 2900 baht for 2 lots of 2GB which seems high to me.

I will take the pc to them today and talk face to face and see what happens.

Older motherboard compatible memory is often much more expensive than current motherboard memory. The technology advances so quickly it doesn't take long for memory to be considered "antique".

Edited September 1, 2014 by rakman

[apiwan]

If it's old and uses ddr1 memory.

It's expensive.

You have to change the motherboard that uses ddr2/3

Buy a cheap new one.

10/15 K will get half decent one.

[ignis]

Just need some help please.

My desktop has 2GB. of ram and Windows 7 is using 90% of the ram.

Will I see a significant increase in performance if I upgrade my ram to 4GB?

Yes.

And how much will the 4GB. cost?

Depends on the type & brand.

http://www.jib.co.th/web/index.php/product/listCategory/1/42/0/index.php

Thank you for your help.

My computer shop has quoted 2900 baht for 2 lots of 2GB which seems high to me.

I will take the pc to them today and talk face to face and see what happens.

1st you need to know what type of RAM you have.. if DDR is it 1 or 2 or 3 ? they are different sizes and do not interchange.

as said on another post the old RAM is more expensive....... for me have DDR3 the price I paid for 8GB Ram = 2,650 baht... that is the same price as 4 GB of DDR2.......... 1GB of DDR Ram is something like 1.400 baht if you can even find it, then add your computer shop service charge

Also you use Windows 7........ if you use 32 bit then pointless having more than 3 GB as cannot be used... if you are using 64 bit then fine.. myself only have 16GB of Ram [2x 8GB], many PC's have more

Also look at what your PC has + condition... maybe better to upgrade the motherboard and CPU with the latest DDR3 RAM........ ask at your computer shop maybe cost total 8 - 10,000 baht.. good for another 7 years, just appears to me spending near 3,000 baht for Ram on a 7 year old PC is a bit pointless [your present motherboard could fail tomorrow + trying to find a New motherboard of 7 years ago]

Edited September 1, 2014 by ignis

[lostinisaan]

I do not believe that the program alone is using so much memory. As already mentioned, you could find out what applications are using how much memory and delete the not necessary ones.

If you run W 7, the 32 bit version and you don't want to add a graphic/video card, you could just add a one GB memory card.

Even a 512 MB would do the trick, which is about the usage of the graphic card.

Edited September 2, 2014 by lostinisaan

[KhunBENQ]

I'm running Win 7 64bit, just have Chrome running, 5 tabs opened.

Task manager:

CPU Usage: 1%

Memory: 2.02GB

An example for an overloaded installation, There must be awful lot of stuff loaded.

Guess the system tray is full with symbols?

The hard way: do a complete reinstallation.

Needs some planning and preparation depending on the current status (backup, inventory, installation media and license available?).

I do this about every 2 years. Takes me 2 days until I have all applications and settings together as before.

(I have a strict separation of data/documents in a separate harddisk partition which makes reinstallation much easier)

Edited September 2, 2014 by KhunBENQ

[Pib]

I have looked at task manager many times and Chrome is using up the majority of the memory.

Well, it does use memory llke any program, but it's not using the "majority" of your memory unless you have "many" Chrome tabs/websites open at the same time...each time you open another tab/website Chrome without closing another tab, basically Chrome starts another mini session of itself. Ditto for the other browsers. So if you are one of those folks who keeps a lot of tabs open on your browser you are going to use a lot of memory.

Below is a snapshot of my Windows 7 machine with Chrome opened with only "one" tab/website open. Notice three sessions of Chrome running...actually it was only two sessions just before I took the snapshot but something on the websiteI had open, which was ThaiVisa, caused it to open another session....probably one of those active advertisements on ThaiVisa. Chrome is using a total of approx 0.211GB or only 10% of a system with 2GB RAM like your machine.

But now I open another website, CNN, and then one more, The Nation. So now I have three websites open and it's showing Chrome running 6 times...now I only have 3 websites open but something on some of those pages is causing Chrome to run mini sessions of itself again. It seems for every webpage you have open you can expect to see Chrome running at least 2 sessions of itself. Basically each tab you have open requires Chrome/IE/FF/etc to use more memory. So with those 3 webpages open Chrome is now using approx 0.465GB which would be almost 25% on a system with 2GB RAM.

So, close all but one tab of Chrome and then see how much memory it's using. And what I found when closing those multiple tabs except one, I still had those sessions running but some of them used much less memory and slide down the list on the Task Memory memory usage table but they were still there using some memory...just using less memory. So, a person would need to ensure they don't have their browser setup to open multiple websites when initially opening Chrome/their browser if they wanted to see how much memory Chrome uses with one webpage open only, because once you open another webpage Chrome doesn't seem to completely kill the tab which use to be open....still there waiting to grow in size again once you reopen another tab.

Also, each webpage uses different amounts of memory....graphics/ads heavy sites use more memory....simple/plain jane websites use less.

One Website Open In Chrome

Three Websites Open in Chrome

Edited September 2, 2014 by Pib

[Thaimaishoe]

Be aware if you are running Win7 starter (32 or 64) your memory will be limited to 2 gb.

Also I think your % of memory includes your swap file size, so if you run the slider up and increase that setting your % memory usage will drop. If you have a lot of hard disk activity when you are using your computer, you are accessing the swap file, and more ram will speed you up - if your OS recognizes it.

You have to be careful about buying odd size sticks of ram... they all come in std sizes, but I mean putting a 512 in one slot next to a 2G stick in the other. You need to consult the MB pamphlet that came with your MB to see what will and will not work - often times mismatched ram is supported but the smaller stick has to go in a particular slot.

If you take your computer to a shop here in LOS, they will most likely sell you more ram, or reformat and reinstall windows - without backing up. That is heresay on my part, I have never taken a computer to a repair shop anywhere in the world, let alone here. But I used to have a store next to an internet cafe, the owner of that shop said that's all they will do.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

at 7 years, I would get a new MB, CPU, and matching RAM. make sure the connectors on the board all match (ATX power plugs, Sata/ide HD connectors) and since I am not a big gamer anymore, I just watch for and use goodish built in graphics.

read up on your MB/CPU options and buy something from one or two performance steps off the bleeding edge. You will be elated with the performance boost regardless, and save lots of money.